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  Martian Dust  

In the NASA news conference of July 22, Peter Smith stated that the Martian dust was magnetic. He said that there is only a single location on Earth that has magnetic dust. After hearing this, I decided to test the dust that came out of my rock. The experiment was conducted using a 1/4" nut driver with a magnet that is about 1/8" across and is inset from the outer edge of the nut driver by about 1/8". I first examined the magnet with my microscope and cleaned it until nothing was sticking to it or the surrounding surfaces. Then I placed the nut driver straight down on the "dust" and examined the magnet again with my microscope to see if anything had adhered. Some particles did adhere and definitely appear to be magnetic. As a control, I used some of the sand that was recovered from the landing sight. None of it adhered to the magnet.

To understand what I think is happening on Mars, look at the following picture.

If you look at the picture carefully, you will see several pieces of volcanic material. There is one in the very lower left and another right above it. Now look to the right of the top of this second piece and you will see a smaller third piece. Now look down and to the right from this last piece and see two more pieces that are just to the right of the white looking rock near the center of the picture. There are more of the smaller pieces to the right of these. These volcanic pieces are the ones that stuck to my magnet. Also, several times after I have sat my rock down on my table, I have later examined the spot and found several small particles that had broken off, merely from the weight of the rock. This would indicate to me that these particles would easily break by virtually any motion of the rock and would help explain why there seems to be so many "perfectly" round rocks at the Pathfinder landing site. I can see several, one being just to the left of Barnacle Bill.

This really only makes good sense, since we know that most Martian rock is magnetic. My rock is magnetic and it is the volcanic structure of the rock that shows the magnetism. This material is very brittle and breaks off easily into these very small pieces we see in the picture above. Therefore, I will predict that the Martian dust will have a spectrum similar to Barnacle Bill. (Unfortunately the Pathfinder died before it took the measurement of the dust.)  This type rock, being high in silicon, can make very small and delicate structures. Under the smaller gravity of Mars and the lesser atmospheric pressure, expanding gasses would have an easier time shaping the volcanic material. As I look at this rock, many of the connecting walls are about the thickness of a piece of paper. After placing my rock on a hard surface, I can later find small pieces that have broken off, merely from handling and the Earth's gravity.

These particles make particularly good dust particles because they have a relatively small weight, many have holes or other structures to them, and that makes them easy to be picked up by the wind. I'm sure many of them may even have "flight" surfaces or shapes that give them some "lift." So a good deal of Martian dust may well be these tiny brittle volcanic particles. If we examine the dynamics of particles being drawn from the surface into the Martian atmosphere, we see that these small, lightweight, and shaped silicon particles have an "evolutionary" advantage over other particles in reaching the atmosphere.

As an overview of the size of the particles, here is a picture of the same particles taken with a close up lens on my Minolta 110 camera. This is a standard size petri dish, which is about 4 inches across.

If one were to blow on this petri dish when the top is off, material would spread everywhere. I think this qualifies as dust. It will be interesting to what the spectrum data will show, concerning the Martian dust. Remember that in the middle of August, before the Pathfinder measurements, I thought the spectrum would probably be like Barnacle Bill and be composed of these high silicon magnetic particles which break off easily to form "dust."

In the next picture, you can see the dust on Mars. This is the magnetic dust experiment and this is true color photo of the actual Martian dust. I have included a picture of the "dust" from my rock as a comparison. My photo is probably not taken with the correct light for it to be "true" color, but it is close. You can see that the particles I have found to be magnetic, appear the right color for Martian dust.

To see more detail on the fine structure of the rock, select Internal Structure, here or at the Mars menu.